Grecian Planning

Last night picked up Su and Carol from their trip to Kew (via all points in South London, by the sounds of it). The back of the station looked suitably desolate in the rain…

Today, the weather has been much kinder to us, allowing everybody's recycling to avoid being blown about - is this how we save the planet?

Tulips still keep popping up, even as others die back.

A casualty of yesterday's wind and rain?

I was dazzled by a brightness in the sky!

Sunlight shining on daffodil leaves…

After a day of sorting out loads of details for our trip to Greece next week, we went to to Larkhall.  This is the pub.

 The greengrocer's and cafe.

 The chemist and the butcher's.

 The chemist has these old painted advertising legends still on its frontage.  We puzzled for ages what gurgeons might be, until we found a photo of the shop on Flickr with the explanantion "Oilcake is what's left when you extract oil from seeds, gurgeons are a kind of coarse meal and sharps are also a kind of meal. I think they were all "leftovers" from milling stuff for human consumption that went into livestock feed."

Then it was off to Alice Park to throw the ball for Bella to get puffed out. Saw this advert there.  I'm a dog listener, but not sure I communicate that well in canine…

There were blue skies and sunshine in one direction, but behind us this was the daunting view.

The contrast in light really brought out the colours of the trees.

This newly planted tree is rather tightly imprisoned/protected. The clouds passed over without rain, which was much appreciated.

This day a year ago, we were having a less active day than of recent times and enjoying hanging out a bit - spent some time at the "Olive Tree" run by Jennine and Tina, here seen with Toby (who writes the Symi Dream blog every day).

I'm shortly off down to Bath to a talk at the wonderful Mr B's Bookshop on "Using Social Media to attract a Publisher". Might be useful? Will report tomorrow…